3 arrested for murder of Rabbi

The United Arab Emirates said on Monday that police had arrested three Uzbek nationals over the killing of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi, an attack that has raised concerns among the growing Israeli community in the country, the AP reports. The statement from the country’s Interior Ministry provided no motive for Zvi Kogan’s killing, although an Israeli Foreign Ministry official later told the Associated Press that he was simply “killed because of his identity.” Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher grocery store in the city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for trade and tourism since the two countries established diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.

The agreement has held for more than a year amid rising regional tensions sparked by the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon after months of fighting with the militant Hezbollah group have stoked anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the United Arab Emirates. The Interior Ministry statement identified the three men as Olimboy Tohirovich, 28, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33. Israeli media, citing unnamed security officials, reported that Uzbeks were involved in Kogan’s killing. Uzbeks and other transnational criminal gangs have previously been hired for Iranian attacks against dissidents and others.

Iran, which supports Hamas and Hezbollah, has also threatened retaliation against Israel after Israel carried out a wave of air strikes in October in response to an Iranian missile attack. The Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi has denied that Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s killing. Although Iran was not mentioned in the UAE statement, Iranian intelligence services have carried out kidnappings in the UAE in the past. Western officials believe Iran is conducting intelligence operations in the United Arab Emirates and keeping tabs on hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

(More Dubai stories.)